Theory of Cultural Anthropology

Cultural anthropology is the field study of living beings. Cultural anthropology’s principal method is field work, the way do natural history.

The field refers to the areas in space in which cultural anthropologists find living population to study.

It is the ‘interacting field’ for various forces propelled by human activities. The field need not have a hard boundary, it may not even be a single geographical area, but all told, a particular ethnographic field is usually some form of community.

Natural history method distinguishes cultural anthropology from the other social sciences. This method is founded on meticulous observation. First is to isolate a field of interacting people. Then observe them interact over natural time cycles (days, seasons, years, generations, a life-time).

These observation is controlled and cross check by repeating them and by questioning – interviewing – our subjects for information about past activities. In this way, by patient, repetitive charting and cross checking of human events, patterns and processes can be distinguishes.

These in turn, with some certainty, to arrive at conclusions that are theories – statements of order, limits, probability and natural law – derived from the field itself, seen as part of nature.

Theories may be descriptive, relational, prescriptive or predictive. Natural history theories are above all descriptive and relational. They are sometimes prescriptive, especially in applied anthropology: they can indicate a recommended area of conduct. But anthropologists seldom make predictions on the basis of their theories. It is important to realize that a prediction is not the only test of a theory.

A theory, then, is a statement of the apparent relationship among observed facts.

Facts originally referred to deeds, events observed in the past. Toady facts refer to givens accepted as true, but they bear the connotation of deeds or event. However, emotional states or feeling can also be facts. To be accepted, both facts and theory must have been verified by repeated observations, often by several observers.
Theory of Cultural Anthropology